USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive: VHA Subject Guide

Established in 1994 to preserve the audio-visual histories of survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust, the USC Shoah Foundation maintains one of the largest video digital libraries in the world: the Visual History Archive (VHA).

The indexing of each interview enables researchers to search in detail for the people, places, events, and experiences described in each one. For example, the archive includes over 1.8 million name records—those of the interviewees themselves, their family members and anyone else they talk about in the interview. The indexing terms include more than 47,000 specific geographic locations from all over the world, and around 8,000 experiential terms used to describe the huge variety of events, experiences, organizations, and other subjects (browse the latter in the Thesaurus).

The VHA contains currently interviews with witnesses of the following:

Armenian Genocide: 334

Cambodian Genocide: 5

Central African Republic Conflict: 4

Contemporary Antisemitism: 10

1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda: 86

Guatemalan Genocide: 14

Holocaust: 53,922

Nanjing Massacre: 30

Within each one are the following interviewee experience groups:

Armenian Genocide:

Armenian Survivor: 191

Descendant: 13

Foreign Witness: 6

Miscellaneous: 23

Rescuer and Aid Provider: 1

Scholar: 7

Yezidi Survivor: 4

Cambodian Genocide:

Cambodian Survivor: 5

Central African Republic Conflict:

Central African Republic Conflict Witness: 4

Contemporary Antisemtism:

Interviewee (Contemporary Antisemitism): 10

1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda:

Elder: 4

Hutu Power Opponent: 1

Rescuer: 13

Tutsi Survivor: 67

Victim's Spouse: 1

Guatemalan Genocide:

Guatemalan Genocide Survivor: 14

Holocaust:

Eugenic Policies Survivor: 13

Homosexual Survivor: 6

Jehovah's Witness Survivor: 84

Jewish Survivor: 51,325

Liberator: 429

Miscellaneous: 155

Non-Jewish Forced Laborer: 14

Political Prisoner: 268

Rescuer and Aid Provider: 1,159

Sinti and Roma Survivor: 406

War Crimes Trial Participant: 62

Nanjing Massacre

Nanjing Massacre Survivor: 30

The interviews currently available in the VHA are in 38 languages:

Arabic: 15

Armenian: 158

Bulgarian: 624

Croatian: 393

Czech: 560

Danish: 69

Dutch: 1,076

English: 27,235

Flemish: 5

French: 1,913

German: 924

Greek: 318

Hebrew: 6,280

Hungarian: 1,348

Italian: 433

Japanese: 1

Khmer: 2

Kinyarwanda: 75

Kurdish: 3

Ladino: 9

Latvian: 1

Lithuanian: 46

Macedonian: 9

Mandarin: 30

Norwegian: 34

Polish: 1,515

Portuguese: 560

Romani: 24

Romanian: 130

Russian: 7,137

Serbian: 384

Sign: 5

Slovak: 561

Slovenian: 6

Spanish: 1,366

Swedish: 264

Turkish: 14

Ukrainian: 304

Yiddish: 574

The interviews currently available in the VHA were recorded in 62 countries: